Category: Homelife

As Darling Daughter’s semester ended, I worked on the submission for the contest mentioned here. Got that sent at the end of May. A few days later, we took a long-planned trip to England to see my sister and her family, and to finally see sights that had been on my bucket-list.

June 3rd through 13th were spent doing this:

Then June 19th through… well, Now I guess… has been spent doing this:

The puppy is reliably potty-trained at last, though still quite demanding. My brain is mush, unable to keep to a single track for very long, because the minute I try to think, she needs something. (I’ve been up and down from my chair about four times so far, during the creation of this post.)

On the writing front, I’m back in research-mode, making significant changes to a character’s backstory in St. Jude’s Lifelines. Unfortunately.

I should be hearing about the contest results for round one sometime in September. Then if I make it beyond that, it’ll be another couple of months. Doesn’t make much difference to publication-timing anyway, since significant edits are in my future. And beta-readers will need time to do their thing, too. I need to get this one wrapped up though, since a couple of others are now pressing frantically for attention.

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Well, shit. We’ve lost one of our wooded friends. I know, I know… with 6 acres of them, we’re bound to lose one every now and then. But I’ll miss this big guy, welcoming me home when I turn into the driveway.

This is what a really gusty day will get you after a bunch of rain. Our neighbor’s tree is holding it up, for now. Barely.

Our TreeGuy is coming out tomorrow to tie it up to keep it from falling the rest of the way, until he can get to it. Some trees fell on houses, elsewhere, so we aren’t the top priority. Yet.

He really hoped to save this one, and had been medicating it yearly, trying to boost repairing growth, but it looks like the driveway had already done too much damage to the roots.

It took 15 years or so, but roots and asphalt do not get along. Do not pave next to trees you’d like to keep, folks. This is going to be an on-going fight for us, probably, until we’ve only got young-ish trees next to the driveway.

(We’re not sure when the driveway was black-topped, exactly, since we’ve just been here for four and a half years. The house was built in 1977, and we’re pretty sure the driveway was gravel for a while. I’m tempted to let it revert back to gravel. Don’t think Mike would go for that though.)

The neighbor’s house is not in danger, but their fence is, and the swing set too.

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